Details

"Cymatic" was a self-produced fashion line selected for showcase at Lunar Gala, Carnegie Mellon's largest annual student-run event. Utilizing the themes of harmonic oscillations and procedurally generated patterns that I explored in my past research relating to physical vibrational phenomena, Cymatic explores the imprint of sound on the material world.

We saught to translate the visceral essence of this phenomena into wearable artifacts through both traditional and modern methods of fabrication. The following season, I was invited to join the Lunar Gala Board of Advisors to mentor designers and lead textile and sewing workshops.

Research

My high school physics class opened me up to the technical world of sound. As a musician, I'd only been able to experience it audibly, theoretically and emotionally. Through investigating the field of cymatics, a subset of modal vibrational phenomena that lets us observe how sound travels through matter, and creating audiovisualizations of vibrational phenomena, I began to see clear and beautiful connections between the sound and the construction of the natural world.

Shown above is an experiment I conducted using a cymascope, which uses the frequencies of musical notes to vibrate a metal plate. The vibration of the metal at these different frequencies varies in geometric nature, unveiled by the sand that follows its shape.
 

Using the notes of a basic C scale as inputs for the frequency modulator (the blue box in the middle image), I was able to send frequency data to a mechanical vibrator (pictured on top of the blue box) that would send vibrations through the metal plate. As I moved up and down the musical scale, the patterns became more and less complex, and beautiful in their own unique ways.

I selected and retouched five striking patterns that were generated to be used for fabrication. I then used a laser cutter to cut the patterns into fabric pieces I made.